We at TED have had youth on the brain recently. TED2013 was themed “The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered.” and we’re still riding the emotional high of the TEDYouth conference in New Orleans last month. At the same time, we’re working on an ongoing “Young Voices” series that profiles take-charge young people. So we were very excited to see several familiar faces among Time’s picks.

In order of age, these 30-under-30 champs are much-adored members of the TED community:

Jack Andraka, 16Andraka makes a good case for paying attention in high school biology class – that’s what he was doing when he got the idea for his simple, low-cost early detection method for pancreatic cancer. Though his initial work was dismissed by 99 percent of the labs he submitted it to, Andraka — who Time has dubbed “the researcher” — caught a break at Johns Hopkins, and made his test a reality, as he shares in his talk at TED2013.

Brittany Wenger, 19In her 2012 TEDxWomen talk, Wenger, presented groundbreaking work in breast cancer detection: artificial neural networks that make the least invasive test for breast cancer incredibly accurate. “The diagnostician” is now a student at Duke University, and is using her technology, Cloud4Cancer, to diagnose other cancers as well.

Ludwick Marishane, 23The irrepressible Marishane spoke in Johannesburg in 2012 as part of TED’s global talent search. He shared the lighthearted but heavy-hitting story of how he invented DryBath, a no-water gel bath substitute for the parts of his native South Africa where clean water is hard to come by. “The protector” currently helms Headboy Industries.

Alexander McLean, 28Dubbed “the transformer” by Time, TED Fellow McLean is the founder of the African Prisons Project, an initiative to bring better infrastructure and more humane living conditions to correctional facilities in Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

We’re proud to be a launching pad for such incredible minds, and we know there is more to come. From the work going on thanks to young people in the TEDx community to the student volunteers who helped run TEDYouth, we’re seeing plenty of Time-worthy talent on the horizon too.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/times-30-under-30-list-and-ted/feed/10Jack-Andraka-at-TEDmstarestarbJack Andraka is just one young TED speaker named to Time's list of 30 Under 30 Who Are Changing the World. Photo: James Duncan Davidson